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Scripture Reading: Heb. 10:24-25; 2 Tim. 2:2; Eph. 4:11-12
In this chapter we will continue to fellowship concerning the group meeting. We all must see that the group meeting is all-inclusive. It is more than eighty percent of the church life. If a church does not have strong group meetings, it could never be that strong. A church’s condition is closely related to the group meetings. Without the group meetings, a church will stagnate and become stale. To give messages to a big congregation may help the saints somewhat, but for the church to be living, fresh, high, and rich, we must have group meetings according to the God-ordained way.
In the full-time training I have given you many practical points concerning the first three steps of the God-ordained way. These points are the result of much experimenting in our full-time trainings and have also been confirmed by the experiences of some of the churches. However, you should not take these points in a legal way. You must be very flexible in your practice of these steps.
Our being flexible gives the Lord a way to reach all His seekers. Recently, I heard a number of testimonies from new ones who had been contacted by saints practicing the new way. At least two were contacted through the telephone by saints who simply began to call numbers in the phone book. Another two had been hoping that some Christians would contact them to bring them to a church. While they were considering in this way, some saints knocked on their door. There are a number of cases like this. By all these testimonies you can see how the Holy Spirit is working today in so many wandering people.
In the United States today there are many wandering people. Even though they may be settled outwardly, they do not have a goal, a destination, for their lives. These people are always longing for a friend who can help them. We can help them. They do not have a destination, but we do. They do not have a goal in their lives, but we can give them a goal. If we do not go out, how can we find these people? Mankind has become a pack of wolves, yet today, at the end of the age, there are many sons of peace among these wolves (Luke 10:3, 6), waiting for us to contact them. If we do not go to contact them, how can we find them? When the Lord visited Zaccheus, He said that “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost” (19:10). The Lord went out with a purpose to find His lost sheep. If we intend to find the Lord’s sheep, we also must go out.
However, when we go out to visit people, we should not be too legal. Do not say, “Brother Lee told us that we must first visit our close relatives, then our neighbors, then our classmates, and so forth. Therefore, we should not contact this person because he is not a relative or a neighbor.” This is too legal. The Spirit is like the wind. We do not know which way the wind will blow, but when He blows, we must be flexible to follow Him. As long as we keep the principle that we who love the Lord should go out to visit people to bring them the gospel, we can be flexible in every way.
You should begin to bring the newborn believers together in group meetings as soon as possible. If you do not have that many new ones, you can have a smaller group meeting, even two or three would be enough. If you baptized one last night, yet his wife has not yet been baptized, two of you may go back to his home tonight to meet with him. If his wife would join you, you could have a good group meeting with only four people. As you gain more new ones, your group meeting can be enlarged.
In principle, there are certain elements that we should have in the group meeting. We should first have fellowship, intercession, mutual care, and shepherding. Then we should go on to be taught and perfected through the mutual teaching. To encourage or initiate the mutual teaching, we may need to ask a proper question. Each one has the responsibility, and each one must be given the liberty to teach in the group meeting through the mutual asking and answering of such questions. This teaching in mutuality issues in the perfecting of the saints. Each one teaches and is also taught. Each one perfects and is also perfected.
In addition, you have to promote what the church is practicing. If the church is endeavoring to encourage all the saints to have a time of morning revival and to live a daily life in Christ’s victory, you must also promote these things in the group meeting. You must help all those in your group meeting to practice having a time of morning revival in order to live a daily life in Christ’s victory.
The benefits of a small spiritual practice like morning revival cannot be measured according to your feelings. On one hand, your time of morning revival may be better than what the apostle Paul experienced, but on the other hand, it may be worse than one of the new believer’s. But regardless of whether it is better or worse than others’, as long as you have a time of morning revival with the Lord, that is wonderful. The real value of food cannot be measured by taste. You may appreciate a certain type of food, but I may not. However, regardless of whether you appreciate a certain type of food or not, as long as you eat it three times a day, you will be sustained.
Your experiences of morning revival may be on different levels, but regardless of the level, it is much better than not having such a time at all. On some mornings you may be in a hurry and not have ten minutes. You may only have time to pray, “Lord, I want to be revived by You. O Lord Jesus, revive me. Lord, I have to go. I am sorry that I don’t have time to stay here with You.” Sometimes I have had to do this, yet this is surely much better than nothing.
We must do our best to have a time of morning revival every day. If we do not have ten minutes, we can at least have a little time to contact the Lord. Surely every one of us, regardless of how busy we are, can find half a minute in the morning to speak to the Lord. We will surely get something. Because I have such little time, I have had a number of morning revivals like this. No matter what, we must never stop having a time of morning revival. This is the life line to all the saints.
In the group meetings you should do whatever the church is doing. Because all the churches are in different conditions and different situations, they may be promoting different things at different times. The group meetings should always follow the leading of the church. If the church is encouraging the saints to go out to visit people for the preaching of the gospel, then you should also promote this practice in the group meeting. You may ask the saints to read John 15:16 in the meeting and then fellowship with them concerning going out to bear fruit. If you promote this, four out of ten will go out for the gospel. Later, there will be the need to promote the home meetings in order to care for the new believers and then the group meetings to perfect them.
In the group meeting we should never be contented with the same number week after week. We may feel that fifteen is a good number for the group meeting, but we should not be content with this. We must fellowship with the brothers and sisters in the group meeting that we all have to be burdened for our group to grow. We may speak to a certain brother, “Near your home there are a number of saints in the recovery. Maybe you could go and visit one of these and bring him to our group meeting next week.”
If a group of fifteen has been meeting together for a few months without any increase, they may need to divide into two groups. Then these smaller groups will endeavor to gain others and will grow. Some may be afraid that to divide a group in this way may cause some to be lost. However, I assure you that what is lost will be small compared to what will be gained. Still, before you divide the fifteen, you must spend two or three weeks to fellowship with them to prepare them. Then when you divide them into two groups, in only two weeks each group may have ten to twelve.
After a group meeting has been together for some time, the saints may not want to leave one another. The grandparents want to keep their children and grandchildren with them forever. However, I do not care for that; I care for the spreading. Let the children be scattered. Then they will grow, establish their homes, and raise up families. Do not keep your children with you for too long. The Bible tells us that when someone is married, he has to leave his parents and be joined to his wife (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31). You should let the saints go to form their own families, that is, to form their own groups. In principle, a group meeting should divide within six months or, at the most, one year. If you practice this, you will immediately see the growth, the increase.
A number of the full-time trainees will not come back for the second term of training. This is glorious because they have graduated and can go back to their places. Wherever they go, they can be a blessing. The Lord promised Abraham that his seed would be a blessing to all the nations (Gen. 12:3). I hope that those who are going back after this term will be a blessing to their churches. Whether they are a blessing or not depends on the way they conduct themselves.
I would like to share a few points for you who are going back to your churches after receiving some training in the practice of the God-ordained way. When you go back, do not preach the new way, and do not promote it among the saints. When people ask you about the full-time training, you must restrain yourselves in answering. Do not say, “The training was glorious! Let me tell you everything I have learned.” If you are so excited in your speaking concerning the training, you may cause trouble. If I were you, I would only say, “The training was very nice.” However, some saints like to be the “information desk” of the church. They would not be satisfied with such an answer. However, others may have a genuine concern for the Lord’s interest. You must be wise and answer according to your discernment. You have to discern whether this person is the one to whom you should tell more.
The first time you attend a meeting, the elders may ask you to give a report concerning the training. You must be careful. If you do not do it, you will offend them. If you do it improperly, you will cause trouble. Therefore, you have to learn to speak the right word at the right time. While you are speaking, you must discern the atmosphere, whether the atmosphere is good for you to speak more or not. If it is not, you can close your speaking in a nice way. Be patient; if you cannot speak something today, there will be a tomorrow.
Do not preach or promote anything; simply live the new way. You have received help from the training. Now go back and pray to the Lord, and I believe that the Lord will give you one or two companions. You can fellowship with these companions, and the two or three of you can go out to get your relatives and neighbors saved. If you practice in this way, you will never stir up any kind of opposition. Simply go out to visit people to get them saved and baptized. Then go back to their homes to cherish, nourish, and feed them so that they will grow. When you bring them to the church meetings, the elders and all the saints will be happy to see some new ones. You also must stir up the new ones to give testimonies in the meetings. New faces and new voices in the meeting really refresh people. They will all find out that these are your fruit, yet you still must be careful in your speaking. Do not boast and do not vindicate the new way; even more, do not criticize anything that the church is doing or has done in the past. That would kill the church. Do not advertise what you are doing. Simply labor quietly and even somewhat hiddenly as a New Testament priest of the gospel according to what you have learned.
Some of the saints may be interested in what you are doing. If others ask what you are doing, do not reject them. To reject them is to oppose them. Simply tell them that you sometimes go out with one or two others to visit people and preach the gospel to them. Again, there is the need for discernment to know how much you should speak to them.
Many times you will be frustrated in your work, but you have to believe that all things are sovereign of the Lord. Every frustration helps you. Do not say or do anything quickly. Always work in a gradual way, bit by bit, believing that whatever you do, if it is of the Lord, the Lord will perform it. If you do this, the Lord will lead you, and you will not cause any trouble. If you have any problems, we would be willing to help you. You can write to us. This kind of fellowship will be a profit to all the churches.
In principle, whatever you do must be peaceful and altogether constructive to the saints and to the church. You should never try to destroy anything. Learn to be wise, to help people, and to avoid causing trouble. By your proper behavior, after two months even a dissenting one toward the new way may be convinced. Do not think that men cannot be turned; many will be turned.
In this term of the training we were not able to cover the fourth step of the God-ordained way, that is, the prophesying for the direct building up of the organic Body of Christ. However, we intend to cover this matter in the second term of the training, and all those messages should be made available to the saints as these have been. I would also encourage you to get a copy of the book Prophesying in the Church Meetings for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ. This is a book of detailed outlines compiled from all the messages that I have given in the past three years concerning prophesying. If you will read these outlines, point after point, slowly and carefully with much consideration, you will receive much help. Another book that I would recommend is The Advance of the Lord’s Recovery Today. This book covers the four main steps of the God-ordained way in detail. You can receive much help concerning prophesying from these publications.
One thing, which I have spoken about very much in the past but have not covered in this term of the training, is the matter of speaking hymns, psalms, and songs in the meetings. I covered this subject thoroughly in February of 1988 at the beginning of the first term of the full-time training in Irving, Texas. In order to make up this lack, I recommend that you study another book of outlines: Speaking Poems in the Church Meetings for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ. The word poems used in this title refers to the psalms, hymns, and songs used in the church meetings. I hope that you will read these outlines carefully and then begin to practice speaking hymns, psalms, and songs in the church meetings for the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
